RS Components celebrates ten years of DesignSpark with the introduction of new features for its website and a new design, to exhibit the usability and functionality demands of its 970,000+ community members. To mark its 10th anniversary, the company will be hosting several celebratory initiatives throughout the rest of 2020.

The new-look website, which offers localised versions for China, France, Germany, Japan, North America and the UK, has been produced with the help of user feedback to produce a cleaner, simpler interface for finding and using content. Enhanced search and filtering tools and colour-coded sections will also ease navigation and improve the user’s experience onsite.

The solution is also an educational platform, hosting projects and competitions to encourage the younger generation to get involved in STEM activities. Several competitions will be launched over the year on the new website, and across the social media channels, as part of the ten-year celebrations, offering prize-induced interactive design challenges for engineers of all ages.

Mike Bray, Group VP of Innovation and DesignSpark, commented: “When we launched DesignSpark back in 2010, it was to support design engineers at every level, from student and hobbyist to professional engineers, who were facing the challenges of reduced design teams and the need to complete their designs more quickly amid rising competition. Those foundations still hold true today, and through active and continual engagement with our community, and acting on feedback from our members, we have gone further to establish DesignSpark as a trusted online support destination for engineers everywhere.”

AVX is an integral part of a supply chain which satisfies the urgent demands of healthcare institutions and healthcare professionals fighting the global COVID-19 pandemic. The company are seeing a rapid increase in customer demand for critical medical equipment, including lung ventilators, CT systems, mobile X-ray, ultrasound and patient monitors. As such, the company's plants are actively supporting the manufacture of all needed components to create the medical equipment required to stop the further spread of the virus and treat those who have been infected.

The company has recently committed speedy delivery of high-grade tantalum capacitors directly to UK Smith Medical company in urgent requirement for building 10,000 ventilators for hospitals and healthcare institutions. The demand for three TRJ series part types was processed with the highest urgency to produce it in the shortest term while maintaining its high-quality standard.

The plants have given, and continue to give, their best endeavour to provide all parts as soon as possible, with the shortest possible lead times.

Flex Power Modules has introduced the PMU8000 series of PoL converters, giving an excellent price-performance ratio in a compact, low-profile package. The new regulators provide high efficiency of typically 95.3% (at half load) and outstanding thermal performance, indicating they can be employed in harsh conditions.

These ultra-miniature regulators comprise a loop optimisation feature, which enables design engineers to optimise their load transient response for various capacitive loads, therefore improving flexibility in system design. They also give a configurable soft start or tracking feature, which makes time sequence design easier and more flexible.

The regulators are offered in a very small form factor package, measuring only 7.5mm x 7.5mm x 5.4mm. They support bottom side assembly, which indicates that a customer can employ this design ability to make additional significant space savings.

There are three versions in the new series, each providing different maximum output currents. The PMU8218 gives an output up to 4A/22W, the PMU8318 up to 6A/33W, and the PMU8418 up to 8A/44W. Each device has an output voltage range of 0.6V to 5.5V, and an input voltage range of 4.5V to 17V.

The new regulators are ideal for a broad range of power conversion applications, including producing power for FPGAs, ASICs, Network Processors, CPUs and GPUs, across multiple sectors as well as ICT, industrial, test and measurement, IoT, railway and medical.

Olle Hellgren, director of Product Management and Business Development at Flex Power Modules, said: “By using automatic production processes, we have been able to achieve high quality and lower component costs for the new PMU8000 regulators – giving our customers the reliability, efficiency and affordability they demand.”

Variohm EuroSensor has extended its range of pressure sensors with the new low-cost EPT2105 series for a 0.5-4.5V ratiometric output in two measurement range options of 10 and 12 bar. With its silicon pressure cell design based on the company's EPT2100 series, the new sensor replaces the 2100’s stainless steel casing with a moulded glass fibre reinforced Polyamide housing. With IP66 sealing, this cost-competitive sensor combines an M18 x 1.5 pressure port and a Packard connector for installation convenience.

The device’s monolithic sensing element includes a silicon measuring cell that combines with high level output circuitry for accuracy ranging from +/-0.5% at room temperature to +/-2.5% across the full temperature range of -40C to 125C. Stability/Year is specified < ±0.5% of range.

At just 50g and with a 10mA maximum current consumption and 5VDC excitation supply, the device is ideal for mobile machinery applications where weight and energy use are crucial requirements. The sensor comprises short circuit and reverse voltage protection with overrange and burst pressure ratings of 20 and 30 bar respectively to assure safe operation. Life expectancy is more than 10 million operations.

Cadence Design Systems has launched the Cadence Xcelium Logic Simulator, enhanced with machine learning (ML) technology, called Xcelium ML, to further verification throughput. Using new ML technology and core computational software, the solution allows up to 5X faster verification closure on randomised regressions.

SIT3822AC-2B-25NHUsing computational software and a proprietary machine learning technology that directly interfaces to the simulation kernel, the simulator learns iteratively over a complete simulation regression. It analyses patterns hidden in the verification environment and guides the solution randomisation kernel on subsequent regression runs to accomplish matching coverage with decreased simulation cycles.

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“Kioxia has effectively utilised Xcelium simulation for a variety of our designs, and it addresses our ever-growing verification needs,” said Kazunari Horikawa, senior manager, Design Technology Innovation Division at Kioxia Corporation. “With the new Xcelium ML, we’ve seen a 4X shorter turnaround time in our fully random regression runs to reach 99% function coverage of original, and plan to use this technology in production designs to shorten the time to market for Kioxia’s business.”

“Xcelium ML is a powerful technology and a great example of the significant opportunity we have to leverage machine learning in verification,” said Paul Cunningham, corporate vice president and general manager of the System and Verification Group at Cadence. “Logic simulation continues to be the workhorse of digital verification, and we are investing heavily in fundamental performance optimisations like Xcelium ML to deliver the highest verification throughput to customers using our flow.”

ROHM offers six new trench gate structure SiC MOSFETs (650V/1200V), the SCT3xxx xR series, which are ideal for server power supplies, solar power inverters, UPS systems, and EV charging stations requiring high efficiency.

The series uses a four-pin package (TO-247-4L) that maximizes switching performance, which makes it possible to decrease switching loss by up to 35% over conventional three-pin package types. This adds to lower power consumption in a diversity of applications.

The company also offers solutions that promote application evaluation, including a SiC MOSFET evaluation board, P02SCT3040KR-EVK-001, furnished with gate driver ICs (BM6101FV-C) as well as with multiple power supply ICs and discrete components optimised for SiC device drive.

More online services than ever are based on location awareness being integrated into M2M systems and other IoT devices. The tiny CAM-M8 module from u-blox offers a quick and easy way to add reliable global positioning in these applications. It offers the option of concurrent operation with any two of the three main satellite-positioning systems currently in operation - GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou - to provide accurate positioning data anywhere in the world. In addition, the module supports satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) that combine data from ground stations with satellite signals for better positioning accuracy. The CAM-M8, which delivers positioning data accurate to within 2 metres, updates at 18 Hz when connected to a single satellite network and at 10 Hz in multi-GNSS mode. Acquisition time is just one second from a hot start.

The module measures just 9.6mm x 14mm x 1.95mm, so requires very little space, and it has an in-built chip antenna with an omnidirectional radiation pattern, which means that it is effective in any orientation. The integral antenna has comparable performance to a patch type, so it will function as the main antenna, or as a standby if an external antenna becomes damaged.

CAM-M8 modules come in two versions. The CAM-M8C uses a crystal oscillator and the CAM-M8Q employs a TCXO. The latter also has slightly lower power consumption.

Both versions can be used with u-blox’s free-of-charge AssistNow assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) service. This makes calculating position much faster by delivering time and status data to the module over wireless networks of the Internet. When satellite reception is weak or intermittent, it means that the modules are still able to calculate position within seconds – something that might otherwise take several hours, points out the company.

Mouser is now stocking the LTC6228 and LTC6229 low-distortion 730MHz operational amplifiers from Analog Devices. Providing low noise rail-to-rail output at very high speeds, the LTC6228 single and LTC6229 dual op-amps support the ADC accuracy essential for applications including test and measurement, medical imaging, optical electronics, and data acquisition.

The op-amps provide ultra-low 0.88nV/√Hz voltage noise and low distortion performance of better than -100dB at 4VP-P for large signals as fast as 2MHz. These outstanding performance metrics allow high dynamic range applications.

The op-amps function from a single supply of 2.8V to 11.75V and can support ±5V (or other lower split supply) while sustaining excellent performance at high frequency and slew rates of 500V/µs. The input can ground sense, while the outputs swing rail-to-rail. The LTC6229 is provided in a tiny 3mm x 3mm DFN package, while the LTC6228 is provided in a 2mm x 2mm DFN package. Both op-amps provide a wide operating temperature range of -40C to 125C and are intended for white goods, instrumentation, optical electronics, and high-density systems.

SIT1602BC-21-33N-6-000000GBoth op-amps are created to drive the LTC2387-18 18-bit SAR ADC for high-speed data acquisition and imaging applications. The ADC provides excellent linearity and wide dynamic range, with very low distortion at high input frequencies.